John Bray

The “Black Baby Boom” – Are we ready?

Within Indigenous Australia there is a population bubble equal in significance to the post-war baby boom in mainstream Australia. The leading edge of that bubble arrives at school in January 2018.

The Stronger Smarter Institute believes this massive demographic change should shape conversations within our schools and communities. Stronger Smarter Institute CEO Mr Darren Godwell asks " Are we ready for the future and preparing for the immense opportunities that will need to be co-created within our school communities as the number of indigenous enrolments increase?" This reality will require school leadership teams to ensure their explicit improvement agendas and associated school improvement strategies are aimed at what really matters – equipping educators and school leaders with the processes, practices and behaviors that are strength based and co-created with Indigenous people.

The numbers

Figure 1 outlines the numbers and annual growth rate of indigenous people born over the fifteen-year period between 2001 and 2016. For comparison, the projected annual growth rate of the total Australian population for the same period are: 0-4 years = 2.1% and 5-9 years = 1.1% (ABS, 2015).

2001 2006 2011 20160

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

60,000

70,000

80,000

90,0003.4%

annual growth

0-4 years

2001 2006 2011 20160

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

60,000

70,000

80,000

90,0002.5%

annual growth

5-9 years

Figure 1 – Indigenous Annual Growth Rates (ABS, 2015)

Figure two provides a larger picture of the total age brackets of the number of indigenous people in Australia. The circled area highlights the numbers of young children who are about to enrol in our schools over the next five years.

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Figure 2 – Australian Indigenous Population Profile (ABS 2011)

Are we ready? What does the Queensland figures show?

Queensland State Schools

Table 1 shows the total number of indigenous students enrolled by region in Queensland state schools in August 2015. From 2011 to 2015, enrolments grew by 19.1 per cent. With the highest enrolment numbers being in far North Queensland, it is interesting to note the greatest growth rates are in the southeast regional areas. Are we ready?

Region 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

Central Queensland 4 836 4 947 5 009 5 204 5 514

Darling Downs South West 4 186 4 436 4 750 4 979 5 237

Far North Queensland 10 199 10 419 10 844 11 260 11 396

Metropolitan 5 420 5 682 5 785 6 148 6 303

North Coast 5 742 6 190 6 626 7 148 7 578

North Queensland 6 597 6 735 6 878 7 093 7 288

South East 4 425 4 818 5 305 5 662 6 007

Queensland 41 405 43 227 45 197 47 494 49 323

Table 1 – Indigenous student enrolments by region (DET, Qld August 2015)

What does this mean for Queensland state schools? Examining school cultures. A strengths-based approach to community and individual transformation

For all of the students, in the “black baby boom” who will be enrolling in state schools from January 2018, this will require a significant focus for all of our school communities to ensure the best possible learning environments are established. These learning environments are those that embrace a set of the five Stronger Smarter Meta-strategies. These strengths-based approach strategies are interconnected and are context-specific. A school will use the processes of building relationships and co-creation to determine which strategies are a priority and what

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they might mean within the context of the school. The collective leadership of these strategies embraces the need for local approaches for the unique and diverse communities as described in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Strategy 2015. The interconnected nature of the meta-strategies will mean that as schools work on one area, they will also start to improve other areas. The Stronger Smarter Meta-strategies are

Acknowledging, embracing and developing a positive sense of identity in schools Acknowledging and embracing Indigenous leadership in schools and school communities ‘High expectations’ leadership to ensure ‘high expectations’ classrooms, with ‘high expectations’

teacher/student relationships Innovative and dynamic school models in complex social and cultural contexts Innovative and dynamic school staffing models in complex social and cultural contexts.

As a school Principal I often was involved in discussions around “school cultures” and it is clear from my experience the term “culture” is vastly misunderstood, overused and influenced through a diverse understanding of the term. Equipping educators and school leaders with the processes, practices and behaviors that are strength based and co-created with their communities will provide the best learning and work place environments. This is the development of a culture of learning together. This relies heavily on the degree of trust and the quality of our relationships. Trust is the complexity factor in this process and one where focused leadership skills are required. The answers to any school issue are already there in the collective ideas of the people. It is easier to create a new culture than to change an existing one!

Understanding school culture: implications for indigenous students

A number of researchers have examined the characteristics of school cultures that support Indigenous students, and why ‘school climate’ is an important factor in improving results for Indigenous students (e.g. the ACER 2000 – 2006 study of 13 Australian schools, Jensen 2014, Helme & Lambe 2011 and Purdie & Buckley 2010). Ockenden (2014) suggests that schools can play a role in reducing the impacts that social background can have on school achievement. School communities need to provide a learning environment where Indigenous students want to attend, learn and succeed.

Hattie (2015) emphasises “a belief that we can make a difference for the children from poorly resourced families is a critical starting point” to build a positive school culture and the mantra needs to be, ‘I can make a profound positive difference to every person who crosses the school gate into my class or school regardless of their background.’ As school leaders, we should know this already and are working on this mindset with our staff every day. Aren’t we? We don’t need to be told this do we, or is that we are so busy with the busy work of school that we assume that we can work together with this positive mindset?

Purdie & Buckley 2010 and Jensen 2014 recognise that a school culture or school climate that works for Indigenous students is the same as a high quality school culture that works for all students. This is a critical point and one that the Stronger Smarter Institute stands by. That is, the Stronger Smarter Meta-strategies are focused on indigenous processes for indigenous students, and these processes if used effectively, will benefit all students from any cultural background.

The school culture characteristics described by these researchers are:

A strong and effective school leadership is clearly critical to improving a school culture. This needs to not be just one leader, but a leadership team.

The leadership team needs to set new expectations for teaching and learning and model the expectations in order to bring everyone on board.

The school culture has to be based on high expectations for all students. These high expectations need to aim not just for levels of similar schools, but for state and territory levels.

Actions need to be guided by core beliefs about the learning capacities of Indigenous students, and these core beliefs need to be shared across the school staff.

There needs to be an orderly learning environment, with a safe school culture that is free from bullying and racism. This is a pre-condition for school turnaround.

The high expectations and school values need to be a shared vision across the whole school community. The school needs to be welcoming to the whole community, and the community should be involved in

planning and providing education. This is a collaborative process.

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We heard this tune distinctively at the Queensland Department of Education and Training 2015 Principals’ Conference - A great school has a great school down the road, on day 2 when the theme was collaboration and how important this is for school improvement. I have said it, my school communities have said it and I bet your school communities say it – “we have a positive school culture and we collaborate”. What does this really mean? Do you and your staff really interrogate what “culture and collaboration” are? This is where the Stronger Smarter Institute works in collaboration to bring the three spheres of personal, school and community closer together until there are high levels of authentic engagement.

High expectation relationships – the Stronger Smarter Approach to building school culture and collaboration

A key pillar of the Stronger Smarter Approach is high expectations relationships as opposed to high expectations rhetoric. “Sometimes high expectations rhetoric espouses lofty ideals that are often imposed with good intentions from the outside rather than negotiated with the individuals to be affected” (Sarra, Australian Senate Occasional Lecture Series, November 2015).

As school leaders, we know from our own evidenced based practice that school community partnerships through collaboration are fundamentally important and that positive relationships with the parents and carers of our students are at the foundation to a child’s education in our schools. We also recognise the great opportunities and the challenges that school community partnerships create. School educators and leaders need to be equipped with the processes, practices and behaviors that are strength based and co-created with indigenous people that will enable them to confront these challenges head on.

From the outset, the Stronger Smarter Approach is founded on core beliefs. These beliefs guide our work and expectations.

The Stronger Smarter Institute believes every child deserves a great education in the community where they live. We believe in the power of the education profession, and we know there is many great teachers and school leaders and they matter. However, we also recognise that we can’t keep using the same strategies and expect something to change. In schools with diverse student populations, this may mean a transformative cultural change for the school.

Our experience is that any group of people already holds the collective knowledge and wisdom to successfully meet the complex challenges they face. In other words, the ingredients for transformative change already exist in every community. The Stronger Smarter Approach looks at existing strengths and empowers communities to work together to pursue innovative strategies that will work in their local contexts.

We believe that co-creating a way forward together with local Indigenous communities is essential for success, and that imposing external solutions will not work. We recognise that the areas where this approach is most needed is in low socio-economic areas, culturally diverse student populations, remote areas, and for students where English is not their first language. So, the Stronger Smarter Leadership program is just not an Indigenous program!

Our team members experience of working with over 2000 educators across the country reveals that transformative cultural change in schools and school communities is possible when it begins with a shift in thinking. We ask educators to have high expectations for all students through the concept of ‘Strong and Smart’ where for an Indigenous student, being smart at school doesn’t have to mean being ‘mainstream', it can be a part of their Indigenous cultural identity.

We also ask educators to not only raise their expectations for their students, but to raise their expectations for themselves. This is the difference. A High Expectation Relationship is FOR the student and not “of” the student. That is, it is a mutual obligation. Our approach is to work for collective personal and organisational change, where everyone recognises his or her own role in enacting that change.

A framework for High-Expectations Relationships

The Stronger Smarter Institute has developed a framework set on High-Expectations Relationships. This framework, as outlined in Figure 3, covers the domains of self, student, peer, parents/ carers and community and

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describes High-Expectations Relationships through the elements of understanding personal assumptions, creating spaces for dialogue, and engaging in challenging conversations.

Figure 3 – The framework for high expectation relationship

A High-Expectations Relationship is an authentic two-way relationship that is both supportive and challenging. The Stronger Smarter Institute research into High-Expectations Relationships draws on both our work with school and community leaders across Australia and the critically reflective conversations held as part of the Stronger Smarter Leadership Program. By describing High-Expectations Relationships, we are able to show the types of behaviours, dispositions and capabilities required by teachers to enact high-expectations for all students in the classroom, and to build strong connections with parents and the school community.

There has been considerable research undertaken in Australia on what needs to be happening in schools to support Indigenous students. The recently released 2015 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Strategy (figure 4) recognises the importance of three priority areas:

Leadership, quality teaching and workforce development Culture and Identity Partnerships

Figure 4: Priority areas. 2015 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Strategy

Through the Stronger Smarter Approach and High-Expectations Relationships, the Institute is showing schools how they can address these three priority areas through high-expectations classrooms with strong teacher-student relationships, and welcoming school environments with strong connections to the local community. The Institute believes that these strong relationships and collaborative approaches are foundational to ensuring the success of other programs and strategies within the school.

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The Stronger Smarter Leadership Program

So what does that mean for an educator who commits to the Stronger Smarter Leadership Program? What does that mean for a Principal who, together with their leadership team and school community, will commit to the program?

The Institute’s flagship initiative, the Stronger Smarter Leadership Program, is designed to train people in the ‘how’ of the processes of the strength based approach of High-Expectation Relationships. We provide professional development that trains participants in the practices, behaviours and processes of applying High-Expectations Relationships in a demanding, professional context.

The Stronger Smarter approach asks teachers to take responsibility and ‘put a mirror on ourselves as educators.’

The High-Expectations Relationships framework has a key element of critical self-reflection and seeking personal feedback to acknowledge the specific dispositions, strengths, weaknesses and cultural assumptions that shape ´self’. Participants are asked to reflect on their day-to-day 'transactions' with students and to contemplate whether or not they are colluding with a negative stereotype. Against the backgrounds of such reflection, an educator can make up their own mind about whether their personal and professional rhetoric matches the day-to-day realities of their exchanges with children and colleagues. Teachers need to recognise the dynamic that underpins failure for many Aboriginal students, and start to confront problems of low attendance and low achievement, rather than laying the blame on the children and the complexities of their communities (Sarra quoted in Perso, 2012). High-Expectations Relationships need to be initiated by focusing on gaining a deeper understanding of both oneself and others as unique cultural beings.

Graduates from the Program tell us that they return to their schools with a much greater level of confidence in their ability to develop relationships with the local community, to develop a collegiate working environment within the school, and to build strength, resilience and high expectations with students in their classrooms.

Sounds evangelistic, doesn’t it? It has to be. It is a strengths based approach. Any organisation in the modern world, like the teaching profession, that requires collaborative interrelationship with colleagues and community members requires this approach. This is the High-Expectation Relationship approach.

The Stronger Smarter approach asks teachers to take responsibility and ‘put a mirror on ourselves as educators.’

Our experience is that the concepts of ‘Stronger Smarter’ and ‘High-Expectations Relationships’ and doing things with community, not to community, are relevant across all schools. The Stronger Smarter Approach provides schools with a set of processes, strategies and tools that they can use to co-create the school change agenda and school priorities that are relevant in their local context.

The benefits of the Stronger Smarter Approach are evident in the feedback we get from school leaders:“The whole philosophy and approach underpins what we do for our kids in our school, whether they’re Aboriginal

or non-Aboriginal.”Steve McAlister, Forbes North Public School, Provincial NSW

“It’s been a really empowering and ground-breaking process for our school. It’s built integrity, it’s built spirit and it’s built a belief within teachers that working together and having high expectations… well I know it has lifted the

performance across the school. Aitkenvale is Strong and Smart” Judd Burgess, Aitkenvale State School, Townsville, Queensland

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“I do believe we’ve come together a lot more since we started training at Stronger Smarter, and we get a lot of parents’ feedback saying that we are a school that really does understand community, and that they feel

comfortable and welcome.” Michael Taylor, Principal, Casino West Public School, Provincial NSW

The Stronger Smarter Institute has developed as a mature and modern organisation that is well regarded as one of the leading leadership development providers in the country.

The Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull asked Dr Chris Sarra (the Stronger Smarter Institute’s founder and current Chairman of the Board) at the 2015 NRL Grand Final in a casual meeting, to list three things that can be done to improve indigenous education across Australia,. Dr Sarra did not reply immediately. Instead, Dr Sarra went away and addressed the question later in November 2015 in his speech at the Australian Senate, Occasional Lecture Series.

I suspect the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is right when he says there has never been a more exciting time to be an Australian and that this is a time for hope. Let us share in that sense of hope in three profoundly simple ways:-

1. Acknowledge, embrace and celebrate the humanity of Indigenous Australians;2. Bring us policy approaches that nurture hope and optimism rather than entrench despair;3. Do things with us, not to us!

(Sarra, 2015:28)

In conclusion, it is clear that the ‘black baby boom’ that our schools are about to experience requires a focused and strategic approach. The Stronger Smarter institute will work with school communities for all students. We believe in the transformative power of high expectations relationships so we arm the leaders of school communities with the tools, belief and confidence they need to create the conditions that give all children the opportunity to be the best they can be.

If you would like more detail about the work of the Stronger Smarter Institute and also access free resources, position papers, online leadership modules and meet the team go to: http://strongersmarter.com.au

john.bray@strongersmarter.com.au

John Bray joined QASSP in 2001, and has been a Principal in many schools in Queensland and the Northern Territory. In term 4 2015, John accepted the position of Director, Partnerships, Communication and External Relations with the Stronger Smarter Institute.

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2014, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Population Projections, State/Territory, data cube: SuperTABLE, viewed 10 November 2014,< http://stat.abs.gov.au//Index.aspx?QueryId=1111>

Bishop, R. & Berryman, M. (2006). Culture Speaks. Huai Publishers. Wellington: NZ.

Buckskin, P. (2012). Engaging Indigenous students: The important relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and their teachers. In: Price, K. (ed). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education. Cambridge University Press.

Department of Education and Training, Queensland – August 2015 http://education.qld.gov.au/schools/statistics/enrolments.html

Marzano, R. J. (2010). Art & Science of Teaching: High-Expectations for All. Educational Leadership, September 2010, p,82-84. .

Ockenden, L. (2014). Positive learning environments for Indigenous children and young people. Resource Sheet no. 33 produced by the Closing the Gap Clearinghouse. Canberra: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare & Melbourne: Australian Institute of Family Studies.

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Purdie, N., Tripcony, P., Boulton-Lewis, G., Fanshawe, J., and Gunstone, A. (2000). Positive Self-Identity for Indigenous Students and its Relationship to School Outcomes [A project funded by the Commonwealth Department of Education Training and Youth Affairs]. Queensland University of Technology.

Perso, T.F. (2012). Cultural Responsiveness and School Education: with particular focus on Australia’s First Peoples: A Review & Synthesis of the Literature. Menzies School of Health Research, Centre for Child Development and Education, Darwin Northern Territory.

Sarra, C (2015) Australian Senate Occasional Lecture Series, 13 November 2015, High Expectations Realities through Authentic High Expectations Relationships: Delivering beyond the Policy Rhetoric, aph.gov.au

Stronger Smarter Institute (2014). High-Expectations Relationships. A Foundation for Quality Learning Environments in all Australian Schools. Stronger Smarter Institute Limited Position Paper

Torff, B. (2011). Teacher beliefs shape learning for all students. Phi Delta Kappan. 93:3, p.21-23.

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